Primeval Noir

La Nuit du Carrefour (1932) – Jean Renoir
Film noir has always been infamously elusive in it’s definition, appropriate considering it was defined long after the fact by critics, scholars and cinephiles yet also in keeping with the frequently off-kilter, nightmarish worlds they brought to our consciousness. It is said to have existed in Hollywood, roughly, between the early forties and late fifties [with The Maltese Falcon and Touch of Evil traditionally, if not accurately, acting as the eras’ renowned bookends.] However, this aesthetic did not come into it’s own from nothing but rather, as many have pointed out, had roots that can be said…
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La Nuit du Carrefour (1932) – Jean Renoir

Film noir has always been infamously elusive in it’s definition, appropriate considering it was defined long after the fact by critics, scholars and cinephiles yet also in keeping with the frequently off-kilter, nightmarish worlds they brought to our consciousness. It is said to have existed in Hollywood, roughly, between the early forties and late fifties [with The Maltese Falcon and Touch of Evil traditionally, if not accurately, acting as the eras’ renowned bookends.] However, this aesthetic did not come into it’s own from nothing but rather, as many have pointed out, had roots that can be said to range from German expressionism, poetic realism, gangster films, pre-code Hollywood, gothic horror, hothouse melodramas, suspense films, thrillers, and everything between. This list intends to represent the strange primordial mixture of such films that existed in the years leading up to, and including, 1941 as well as led to the ‘genre’ as we now know it.